Whoa there, Ofay!

My patience snapped during the (again, overlong) scene of the KKK initiation, intercut with Harry Belafonte telling the story of a lynching. The former event is happening in a hotel ballroom, with full robes and all**, and there’s a line of waiters in the back, white, black and brown. He pans down the line of their faces — the black men are angry, the brown men stone-faced and two white women are beaming and nodding along. I’m like, fuck you, asshole.

Do you remember, years ago, Barbara Grizzuti Harrison wrote a profile of Lee for Esquire or GQ or one of those, and the headline was “Spike Lee hates your cracker ass”? He was incandescent with anger over that, but I’d say she (or whoever wrote the headline) got that one right on the nose.

** This event is going on in, yes, a semi-public space, even though earlier in the film they didn’t even say “Klan” to one another, but insisted everyone call it “the organization.” Also, we’re asked to believe that David Duke flew across the country to behold the swearing-in of a single KKK member. OK, whatever.